Blackness is not simply a reactionary title or identity; that is indeed the "negative" way of characterizing African American identity.

What I'm talking about is both political and then also extra-political. Because what Donald Trump is doing is not simply to be measured in terms of its political effect. It's the very spiritual uplift of the nation. It's the very tenor and tone, morally speaking, of what this country is about. And so the unleashing of these fierce and ferocious beliefs have a potential impact that is quite deleterious, quite negative, quite destructive. And I think we have to say something.

The beauty of the literary art, the grappling with the black church, the wrestling with one's identity in the bosom of a complicated black community that was both bulwark to the larger white society as well as a threshing ground, so to speak, to hash out the differences that black people have among ourselves.

Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent.

I'm nervous about the prospects of an America that refuses to abide by its best conscience and its best lights and its best angels.

Men think women, they don't think men. They don't think toxic masculinity.

I don't mind the job of saying to white people, "Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing." And it's my job to educate white folks every day.